“We have not yet taken into account the major transformation that is upon us,” writes the French philosopher Chantal Delsol. What she calls “the end of a civilization sixteen centuries old” is, in her view, nothing less than the end of Christendom.11xChantal Delsol, La fin de la Chrétienté (Paris, France: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2021), 9. All translations by Firmin DeBrabander.
The bleak religious landscape across the West suggests it may not be an exaggeration. Of course, in broad intellectual, political, and institutional respects, Europe has advanced far down the path of secularization, but in recent decades we have witnessed a dramatic acceleration of what many scholars of religion call a vast “dechurching,” a process involving entire populations, not just intellectuals, radicals, or other members of the so-called secular elite.
Americans have a reputation for being very devout—and publicly devout—certainly in comparison to their European peers, who are appalled, for example, when the US president invokes the divine and asks that “God bless the United States of America.” The Christian right, furthermore, enjoys immense social and political power, recently flexing its muscles with the overturning of Roe v. Wade. And yet recent studies by the American scholar Ryan Burge and others reveal that dechurching has not only arrived on our shores but is advancing with remarkable speed. As theologian and sociologist Stephen Bullivant puts it, “This is a genuine watershed moment: a grand socio-religious Reset.”22xStephen Bullivant, “The Demise of Christian America,” Catholic Herald, March 1, 2023; https://catholicherald.co.uk/the-demise-of-christian-america/.